Ken Clarke snubbed campaigners for penal reform last week who are fighting to ‘spare women from prison’. Sophie Willett from The Howard League for Penal Reform wrote this piece for Leftfootforward.

Willett’s explains that it was five months before the government responded to Baroness Corston’s report on women in in the penal system, and then flatly rejected the recommendations to speed up the closure of women’s prisons. Clarke also rejected calls for the appointment of a ‘Women’s justice Champion’ – an appointment which would help women to turn their lives around.

It would be a logical step to at least review female incarceration, and if he did he would soon see the types of crime women commit do not make them dangerous to society and therefore incarceration is not the most effective or useful (in terms of preventing further re offending) method of punishment.

I also wrote a post on this earlier in the week which you can read here. I hope the Justice Secretary wakes up to the issue of female incarceration before we have an even bigger problem on our hands.

Despite my frustrations at the Justice Secretary I was pleased to see that the Government is rightly tackling issue of over sexualised music video content and placing tighter regulations on music videos. The government is also proposing to provide a portal for parents to complain about products which they consider to be inappropriate for their children.

The report criticises the premature sexualisation of children and regardless of what political persuasion you are is something which we should all be supportive of. You can read more on this here.

Reading this week that the first female editor (Jill Abramson) had been appointed to the New York Times was a mixed emotion. Of course I am delighted to see a female editor of a highly influential and long established internationally recognised newspaper. But it reminded me of the pitiful number of female editors who edit our national papers. Would anyone like to guess how many female editors there are editing our national papers?

The answer is two. Yes there are just two female editors out of 21 national daily and Sunday titles. Both – Tina Weaver at the Sunday Mirror and Dawn Neeson of the Daily Star – edit tabloids. You can read more on this pitiful state of affairs here.